Nobbut Laiking

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CASTING my mind back to childhood, I remember we had a modest sized bookcase and an equally modest quantity of books to adorn it. But I do recall one notable feature — a whole row of Just William books.

IT was one of the most dramatic incidents I’ve covered in my long years as a reporter — and furthermore I had a bird’s eye view as events unfolded on one otherwise quiet midweek afternoon on the outskirts of Keswick.

MOST folk would agree that our prisons are unpleasant and squalid places where drug-taking is rife and violence festers. The problem arises when politicians try to come up with an alternative that offers protection to the general public from some of the nasty criminals presently in prison, who would otherwise be walking the streets.

SEVERAL years ago there was a bold and flamboyant bookmaker called John Banks whose on-course exploits were legendary among big-time punters. Banks, in a television interview, described his job as “a licence to print money”.

A SMALL group of schoolkids gathered in a Cumbrian city centre with a home-made banner looking more limp by the minute in the rain. A few disinterested shoppers occasionally pausing on a busy Friday morning to see what all the fuss was about.

WELL, I was warned that she might be difficult. And so it proved. She had no wish to answer my questions, just to plug her new book and then be off. One well-known television personality who turned out to be nothing like the persona she was fond of projecting in front of the cameras.

YOU might say that, privileged to be living in the Lake District, we already have one foot in heaven. Whenever I visit the little hamlet of Watendlath I feel I have not just one foot in heaven but at the very least the toes of my other foot, it’s that heavenly.

THE worst day of my life came with a phone call while I was working, telling me that my brother’s body had just been found in his shed. He had taken his own life that morning and it was my duty to break the news to my elderly mother.

THE editor was plainly shocked as he reached for a glass of fortified water to calm his nerves. “I want to introduce more ‘f words’ in the column in the coming months,” I announced. He had jumped to the obvious conclusion when all I meant was these “f words” stood for fun.

THEY have become as much a part of our pre-Christmas ritual as the fancy lights, the Victorian fairs, the school Nativity plays in which one of the Three Wise Man inevitably wets himself with excitement, plus the usual rash of inconvenient strikes that wreck any festivity for the travelling public. I refer, of course, to winter wonderlands and bad Santas.